Hi Gil, I'm a few pages behind. I'm the mother of a 7 year old, and that is where I'm coming from when I say that an R rating seems appropriate to me. I am raising my daughter to see the nice lesbian couple who live next door to us as our great neighbors, and doing my best to have her see gay as one of the normal facets of life (and she does). The gay content of A Single Man is none of the reason I would give it an R rating. Most of the subject matter is very mature - depression, drinking, flirting, contemplation of suicide, teachers having personal relationships with students. It's a very grown up movie.

Thanks for responding! I agree that the film’s subject matter is adult in nature but not more so than many other films that have received a 14A rating. (The title that comes to mind is THE DARK KNIGHT, which is probably not the best example because as I recall, the fact that it received (purchased?) a 14A rating did cause some controversy.) I have no problem with most teenagers being able to see the film without adult supervision, which the 14A rating would allow. Besides, I doubt that many teens would be interested in seeing the film unless they were fans of the British teen series Skins in which Nick Hoult also stars and ironically that show, being British and all, is way more explicit than the film. Of course, gay teens and fashionistas might also be interested which is where I’m coming from, I guess. I want teens, especially the gay ones, to be able to see it without feeling like it’s somehow wrong or titillating.

Anyway, my point is that the ONLY reason A SINGLE MAN received the 18 rating is because of its homosexual content. If George was longing for his dead female lover, passionately kissing her in a flashback, ogling female tennis players, exchanging glances with a Spanish woman and passively flirting with a female student, the film would have been rated 14A, naked buns and all.

She was my maternal great-grandmother on her father's side, named Louisa Dahl, from a place, apparently, called Dahl or Dahle. She left Europe from an unknown port, possibly a Dutch port, on the USS Rotterdam, which was one of the large international ships carrying immigrants to America during the early 20th century, in 1916, which is, curiously enough, the same ship (not necessarily the same trip, however), as my former husband's grandfather. Her genes most definitely dominate as I and my mother Louisa look very much like the portrait of Louisa Dahl. I have always wondered whether she left Europe because of anti-Jewish sentiment, since the disease I was recently diagnosed with occurs with far greater frequency among Ashkenazi Jews.

Lucky she got out when she did. There was a war on.

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"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

I'm quite aware of that. But Louise said her great-grandmother probably sailed from a Dutch port, not from Stockholm or Goteborg--so I would guess maybe from Rotterdam on the Rotterdam. And a year later, in 1917, Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare, the act that ultimately brought the U.S. into the war, after the sinking of the Lusitania.

So I still say Louisa Dahl was lucky to get out when she did. A year later she might have ended up on the bottom of the Atlantic.

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"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

Most of the subject matter is very mature - depression, drinking, flirting, contemplation of suicide, teachers having personal relationships with students. It's a very grown up movie.

All of this is included in The Catcher in the Rye, a book read by teens throughout the world, and a novel I was proud to give to both my son and my daughter when they were 14-15, in that range.

Teens should know about depression, because being a teen is pretty depressing sometimes. They should know about drinking, flirting, and all the rest of it, so they aren't knocked off their rockers when it happens.

All of this is included in The Catcher in the Rye, a book read by teens throughout the world, and a novel I was proud to give to both my son and my daughter when they were 14-15, in that range.

Teens should know about depression, because being a teen is pretty depressing sometimes. They should know about drinking, flirting, and all the rest of it, so they aren't knocked off their rockers when it happens.

But don't you agree that there are some differences between a book that you give to your kids, and a movie that they might try to see without you?

For one thing, you already knew what was in Catcher in the Rye before you gave it to your kids. I'm sure most people couldn't say that about this movie. After all, you're a lot more culturally aware, FRiend Lee, than an awful lot of American parents.

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"It is required of every man that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellow-men, and travel far and wide."--Charles Dickens.

I'm quite aware of that. But Louise said her great-grandmother probably sailed from a Dutch port, not from Stockholm or Goteborg--so I would guess maybe from Rotterdam on the Rotterdam. And a year later, in 1917, Germany declared unrestricted submarine warfare, the act that ultimately brought the U.S. into the war, after the sinking of the Lusitania.

So I still say Louisa Dahl was lucky to get out when she did. A year later she might have ended up on the bottom of the Atlantic.

Rotterdam is a whole different thing. I thought you meant she was lucky to get out of Sweden, which didn't make much sense in the war-context.